Monday, June 26, 2017

My Personal Post Mortem Evaluation

If this project had been delivered under my auspices as a Technology Executive I would ask for a post mortem. Projects that come in a year after their promise dates deserve some reflection on what went wrong even when the end result is a great one. This was not my project and I know woefully little about the most significant cause of the delay which I understand was the time it took to come to agreement with Openreach on the deployment strategy for our solution.

My minimal understanding is that in order for Temple to have the optimal solution, which is to have our own phone cabinet and accompanying DSLAM cabinet, Openreach needed to open their network to Call Flow. Apparently this is not something that Openreach wanted to do. Hence the escalation to Ofcom.

This lack of information, however, is my primary complaint about the project. Roger and I were extremely interested in all aspects of the project, we were willing to get our hands dirty, and we were at least reasonably knowledgeable on aspects of a technology rollout. Unfortunately, even when Ofcom was involved on behalf of our village, we were not informed.

I wonder if we could have helped? I think we could have. Unfortunately through this entire project we, or myself at least, felt a little like a mushroom. We did get regular status updates...but generally only when we asked. So we asked often. This was a government funded project and I think we had the right to know what was being done on our behalf. It was also a technology project yet other than a very static website there was no proactive use of any of the myriad of web based communication products and techniques that could have been used to keep us informed. In my experience, proactive communications reduces the need to answer calls that might not have been made in the first place if information was made available more freely.

So that is my post mortem evaluation. Involve the end user to the greatest extent possible and communicate openly and frequently. The project was a success. The result is truly game changing for Temple. We are glad to have it in place. Can't help but wonder if Roger and I could not have helped to get it here a little sooner though!

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About Me

Retired technology executive (CTO and then CIO of a $4.5B business) reinventing himself as a maker. Specializing in solutions that exploit single board micro-processors crossing the physical interface between the computer and the real world. Most recently focused on 3D Printing and Design.